Missing our fair share

By William Merrell and Col. Len Waterworth

Updated 8:31 pm, Sunday, July 6, 2014

Photo: Johnny Hanson, Staff

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A Category 4 o 5 hurricane making landfall near Freeport would be likely to produce a storm surge that would flood much of Galveston County, about half of Brazoria County and nearly one-quarter of Harris County. less

A Category 4 o 5 hurricane making landfall near Freeport would be likely to produce a storm surge that would flood much of Galveston County, about half of Brazoria County and nearly one-quarter of Harris ... more

Photo: Johnny Hanson, Staff

Missing our fair share

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Six years after the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Ike, storm surge remains a critical threat to the Galveston Bay region. Led by Texas A&M University at Galveston, Ike Dike researchers have been working on studies that when completed will be critical to surge-suppression strategies in the region. The limitations of local funding necessarily slow this research. We believe that federal legislation, similar to that passed for other hurricane-struck regions, such as Louisiana and the East Coast, is needed now to engage fully the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in research and eventually the construction of a comprehensive surge protection system for the upper Texas coast.

Special legislation was passed for states affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy that have them on a fast track, while we who were hit by Ike received no special consideration. The insanity of this is that surge protection is being dictated by which storm happened to hit you, not by the critical national assets needing protection.

Galveston Bay surge protection studies are in a process that is mired with excessive policy and procedure and insufficient funding that at its very best would have construction start about 2025 and require millions of dollars in state or regional matching monies.

Other sections of the country, after a storm-induced surge disaster, have sought legislative action for three successful congressionally driven projects that differed significantly from the previously mentioned process being used to fund the Houston/Galveston surge protection project. The most ambitious was the Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System barrier. Fifteen billion dollars was provided with no local matching funds. An ambitious timeline for completion was used and the Corps of Engineers was allowed to relax many rules.

Also, often overlooked in the Katrina aftermath, is the Corps' $10 million protection study for the Mississippi Coast - without local matching funds and with relaxed internal review. Recently, the Sandy-affected states have received $50 million for Corps' studies - again with no local matching requirements and relaxed internal review.

If the Galveston Bay region had, after Ike, moved as fast as the Greater New Orleans region after Katrina, we would have Corps of Engineers-built surge protection now. Instead, we don't even have a Corps study underway that looks at Galveston Bay surge protection.

As Sandy and Katrina were for other states, Ike should be a wake-up call for us.

The legislative path in Congress requiring aggressive Corps' studies and construction is the best and fastest approach to protect the Galveston Bay region. Our local congressional delegation needs to begin working on this now, stressing that we are only asking for equal treatment with other hard-hit states.

It is certainly in the federal interest to protect the critical infrastructure of the petrochemical center of the United States as soon as possible.